Representing knowledge in semantic cultural Web

Cultural heritage is rich in conceptual associations, where different traditions and cultures play a significant role. Applications in this field date from many years and problems are well known. The Semantic Web scenario opens a new perspective. Technologies like XML, RDF and OWL can support new approaches, where we can get advantage from the intrinsic decentralized architecture of the Web, and can achieve a true technical and semantic interoperability, coping with different cultural approaches. In this work we discuss some general issues of applications in the field, mainly considering the scholar needs and the proposed solutions. Afterwards, we give a brief overview of the Semantic Web technologies (metadata, RDF, OWL). Finally, considering the CIDOC CRM core ontology, we suggest a possible approach towards formalizing, exporting and sharing knowledge, which will safeguard efforts by scholars in the field in the past years.